Three Fates

to him.
    “Don’t come out in the rain.”
    “Hell, boy, little rain doesn’t hurt. Everything else does at my age, but not a bit of wet.” He caught Jack in a one-armed embrace.
    Rebecca saw now the old man was quite tall, but bent a bit with age. His big hand reached up to lie across Jack’s cheek and looked, despite its size, fragile there, and somehow sweet.
    “I’ve missed you,” Jack said, and leaned down in an easy, unself-conscious gesture Rebecca admired and kissed the old man lightly on the lips. “This is Rebecca Sullivan.”
    He shifted his body, and again she noted the gentleness in him when he slid a hand under the man’s arm.
    “Well, you said she was a beauty, and so she is.” He reached out and took her hand, simply held it. And she saw with puzzled embarrassment the sparkle of tears come into his eyes.
    “Rebecca, this is my great-grandfather.”
    “Oh.” At sea, she managed a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
    “My great-grandfather,” he repeated. “Steven Edward Cunningham, the Third.”
    “Cunningham?” Her throat snapped closed. “Steven Cunningham? Sweet Jesus.”
    “It’s a great pleasure to welcome you into my house.” Steven stepped back, blinking at tears. “Mary!” he shouted again. “Deaf as a post,” he stated, “and she’s forever turning her bloody hearing aid off. Run up and get her, Jack. I’ll take Rebecca into the parlor. She’s fussing with your room,” he said as he led Rebecca away. “Been fussing since Jack called to say you were coming.”
    “Mr. Cunningham.” Off balance, she walked blindly into a neat parlor where everything gleamed, and sank at his urging into the deep cushions of a wing-backed chair. “You’re the same Steven Cunningham who . . . who was on the Lusitania ?”
    “The same as who owes his life to Felix Greenfield.”
    “And you’re Jack’s—”
    “Great-grandfather. His mother’s my granddaughter. And here we are. Here we are,” he repeated and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’m sentimental in my old age.”
    “I don’t know what to say to you. My head’s spinning.” She lifted a hand to her temple as if to hold it in place. “I’ve heard of you all my life. And somehow always thought of you as a little boy.”
    “I was just three when my parents made that crossing.” He sighed deeply, then tucked the handkerchief away. “I can’t be sure how much I actually remember, or how much I think I remember because my mother told me the story so often.”
    He walked over to a polished gateleg table crowded with framed photographs and lifted one, brought it to Rebecca. “My parents. It’s their wedding photo.”
    She saw a handsome young man with a dashing mustache and a woman, hardly more than a girl, glorious in silk and lace and her bridal glow.
    “They’re beautiful.” Tears threatened to spill. “Oh, Mr. Cunningham.”
    “My mother lived another sixty-three years, thanks to Felix Greenfield.” Steven took his handkerchief out again and gently pressed it into Rebecca’s hand. “She never remarried. For some there’s only one love in a lifetime. But she was content, and she was productive, and she was grateful.”
    “The story’s true, then.” Composing herself, she handed him the photograph.
    “I’m proof of that.” He turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Here comes Jack with my Mary. When she’s done fussing over you, we’ll talk about it.”
     
     
    MARY CUNNINGHAM WAS indeed deaf as a post, but in honor of the occasion, she turned her hearing aid on. Rebecca was given a lovely room with fresh flowers in china vases and invited to rest or freshen up before supper.
    She did neither, but simply sat on the side of the bed hoping her mind would settle. It was Jack who knocked on her door fifteen minutes later. Rebecca stayed where she was and studied him.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I thought it would mean more this way. It did to him, and that matters to me.”
    She nodded. “I think in my heart, I always believed it happened just as I’d been told. But in my head, I wasn’t so sure. I want to thank you for bringing me here, for giving me this.”
    He crossed over, crouched in front of her. “Do you believe in connections, Rebecca? In the power of them, even the inevitability of them?”
    “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”
    “I’m not a sentimental man,” he began, but she laughed and shook her head.
    “I saw you with Steven, then with